


Going the Distance

by Major



Category: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Genre: Drama, Established Relationship, F/M, Humor, Nighttime, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 01:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12570752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/pseuds/Major
Summary: Kat and Patrick fight on Halloween. It's not a cage match, but it may as well be.





	Going the Distance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).



> This takes place during their college years, so post-canon and slightly in the future. Happy Halloween!

Kat was a champion for human rights, activism that Patrick was now indebted to since she could not kill him without entering into a great deal of hypocrisy on the issue.  In fact, she had shown commendable restraint throughout the entire argument.  For example, under sacred kindergarten logic, he started it—therefore, the blame rested like stone on his shoulders, whereas her portion of the blame sat as a guiltless feather across her own.  Secondly, she had spent spring break in Australia and summer vacation in Padua.  It followed, from negotiations sealed with terms scribbled on a post-it and initialed by both one afternoon after paintball, that Patrick had to spend next Christmas in New York where she was hosting the holiday for the Stratfords.

Her dad and Bianca were flying out as much for her father to investigate that her apartment was still secure and vandalized only by the street artists whose graffiti was politicized, photographed and posted online by Kat, as to spend the holiday together.  Patrick was supposed to be there.  Those were the terms.  Written in highlighter on a yellow post-it that had to be tilted directly under a lamp to read.  It had been the only thing with ink in it on hand at the time.  It was binding by the strength of their word if not the law, and going back on it with only two months before it was due to happen made the gasket she blew perfectly justifiable by her own reasoning.

The argument started with them strolling through the gutted aisles of a nearly bare Halloween store for last-minute costumes to wear at the party Bianca convinced everyone to go to.  In a rare occurrence, everyone was home at the same time for the weekend.  Kat flew in the day before.  Even Michael was visiting from MIT.  The party was in Mandella's apartment building, only a few blocks away from where Patrick was living these days.  Kat was actually looking forward to it.

Three years at Sarah Lawrence had only increased her desire to make her own way on the east coast, but it was nice to come home for the occasional visit and touch base with everybody.  Doing the long-distance thing with Patrick was less than ideal, but they had a schedule and a routine that they had down pat by now until she graduated in another year and a half and they figured out what to do from there.  So three days together with all of their friends in town should have been smooth sailing.  Well, day one had passed with sex, a demonstration of how far along she was at learning the guitar now (see: not far but better than terrible), and no bloodshed.  Such peace was as welcome as it was temporary.

"Oh, by the way," Patrick said as he dragged a fireman costume down the rack with a metallic scrape of the hanger it was on.  "I'm not going to make it out to New York this year for winter break."

There was a howl at the back of the store where a kid tried to scare his friends in a werewolf mask, but Kat had trouble hearing it over the starting bell for the boxing match where Patrick had just thrown them in the ring without warning.

She whirled around.  "By the way?!"

The peace was nice while it lasted.

It escalated to the quick joust of sharp tongues in the makeup aisle where all the witch kits were sold out, but for the low price of $9.99, you could transform yourself into the Creature of the Black Lagoon:

Patrick inspected the package.  Kat snatched it from his hands and hung it back up.  He looked like a swamp monster to her all on his own right then.

With a short, frustrated exhale, he argued, "Don't you think I want to watch you pretend to cook yams while serving store-bought dishes to everyone?"

Fat chance.  Bianca had been slamming her with specific things that she wanted ready for her to help with on hand since the day their dad agreed she could host at her off-campus apartment that year.  "There will be no pretending!  I've already compiled a list of recipes, ingredients, and kitchenware."

He corrected, "Don't you think I want to watch you burn down your apartment and eat burned yams?  I do.  You're going to have to trust me on this."

"I trusted you to respect the binding nature of our agreement."  Which, okay, brought to mind a drafted contract with notary public oversight instead of the afternoon they spent in bed after washing paint from their hair when he stuck and smoothed out a post-it on her bare belly and wrote 'See you on Christmas' on it.

He leaned in close, brow knitting in that way he got when he found a particularly amusing way to tease her.  "I wondered why you sliced my palm with that dagger.  You should warn someone before they enter into a blood oath."

It was not funny.  His explanation of having to go to Sydney to help his uncle with a work project was insufficient.  His refusal to adequately explain why and how he couldn't help around the plans he already made with her, beyond that he could only get a handful of days off from the auto shop where he worked, was infuriating.  His uncle's architecture business was fully staffed with competent people he could use on the project; he didn't need his nephew with a few community college credits under his belt to fill in as an intern on the busiest day of the year.  Honestly, it smelled of his family trying to manipulate things to have him home for Christmas.

"That's real nice," Patrick said when she voiced the opinion.  "What would be wrong with my family wanting me around on the holidays even if that were true?"

"Nothing!" she answered sincerely.  "I love your family.  But we have a system.  The system works.  We split time as evenly as we can.  Long-distance relationships work when you prioritize them."

"They work," he countered, "when you want to be together.  We do.  One holiday apart isn't going to make the system self-destruct."

"You're right, it won't self-destruct.  It's being attacked from outside forces."  She gestured at him emphatically, and he replied by putting an oversized baby bonnet from the shelf behind him on her head and holding a comically large bottle towards her.

The symbolism was very clear, and her growl of frustration as she ripped it off her head was entirely justified.  She was not being a baby by holding certain expectations that could easily be reached with minimal effort on his part.  Flaking on her when it was entirely avoidable was certainly not more adult either.

The disagreement reached volcanic levels when Kat stormed out of the store without buying anything and responded to Patrick calling out and trying to catch up to her on the sidewalk by stealing an egg from the carton of a kid running a solo egging mission up and down the street and hauling it back at him.  Paintballing had made her aim true, and yoke splattered his chest in a way Kat called satisfying and Patrick could only deem a call to war.

The kid lost half his carton happily enough, cackling in his astronaut costume as they yelled at each other and darted behind street signs and newspaper stands to avoid egg projectiles.  They got back to Patrick's apartment covered in sticky grossness.  The war was a draw, no winner on either side.

Three months apart since they were last together over summer was to blame for the shower sex.  The warm press of Patrick against her under the hot shower spray was nice (dearly missed when they were reduced to phone calls, email, and webcams).  It gave her anger focus in the form of her mouth on the wet curve of his shoulder and rough hands down his slick back.  But it was not make up sex.  Kat got out and grabbed a towel, feeling looser but still annoyed beyond repair and erased any hopes he might have had otherwise by informing him of that calmly as she left the bathroom.

It was almost midnight when they were both dressed.  Bianca had left several texts informing her that if she did not show up within the next ten minutes she would come over, force her into a Disney princess costume, and drag her to the party herself.  She finished blow-drying her hair and put it up.  Bianca would have to deal with her showing up dressed as herself.  Plenty of people around town still thought that was scary enough on its own.

Patrick wandered in, wet hair tied at the base of his head like he did when he didn't want to get paint in his hair.  He was probably still wary of eggs.

"You ready?" he asked.

She looked up in surprise after grabbing her jacket off the arm of the couch.  He had no objections to hanging out with Cameron and Michael for a couple of hours, but she figured he'd use the argument as an excuse to blow it off and watch horror movies on his own until she got back.  "You're coming?"

"How else will we get candy if we don't trick-or-treat?"

Growing up with Bianca had taught her the fine art of completely ignoring stupid things people said.  "You don't need to come with me."

"I'm glad you think so," he said cheerfully.  "We've been disagreeing all night.  Why fix something that has been broken for hours?"

She tugged her jacket on, feeling exceptionally unfriendly towards someone whose name she'd just mumbled incoherently while a shampoo bottle had dug into her back.  "If you stalk me down the street, something else might get broken."

He joined her at the door, pulling his own jacket off the coatrack that she was willing to bet he never used when she wasn't there to hang it up.  "Thanks for the heads up.  I'll be sure to wear a cup."

"Why?"

He smiled.  "Because despite being cross with me, I'm pretty sure we both value the unfractured state of my penis."

She glowered and corrected him, asking more clearly, "Why are you coming with me?"

"Because it's midnight on Halloween and I may want to kill you right now, but I don't actually want you dead."  He was all grins, dimples, and pleasantry.  She could have smacked him, but they needed to get a move on before Bianca showed up and tried shoving a Rapunzel wig on Kat's head.

"Stay three feet behind me, and do not speak," she ordered.

"Ooh, creeping behind you silently definitely won't draw the attention of the police."

She tilted her chin up at him with a tight smile.  "Don't expect me to bail you out."

He leaned down with a grave expression, both hands squeezing her shoulders.  "Kat, I would not expect you to shoo a bear if it was mauling my face."

There was some lovely imagery.  With an arched eyebrow, she suggested, "You should walk into the woods covered in honey and see."

His hands fell away as she left, and she only detected his resigned sigh behind her.  The rest of him, she resolutely ignored.

Patrick abided by her terms for most of the walk to the party, allowing Kat the space she needed to bring her annoyance to a boil in peace.  A few minutes on, he caught her elbow and reached across to her other arm from behind, and she turned to remind him that most of the scary rumors about her were lies but not all of them.

He shook his head before she could.  "That car behind us."  He pulled her closer to him when she tried to glance back and stopped her from looking.  "It's following us."

More subtly, she looked back.  It was too far behind them to get a look at the driver on the dark road, but she didn't recognize it.  Black, nondescript, nothing about it stuck out.  She wanted to accuse him of imagining things and using it as an excuse to distract her from being mad at him, but the car was moving too slowly and after a turn, it never strayed, staying an equal distance away from them as it cruised too slowly for the speed limit behind them.

"A creeper on Halloween night," Kat said quietly.  "He loses points for lack of originality."

Patrick's lips quirked, and he nodded to an alley up ahead.  "We'll cut through there and lose him.  The apartment is a couple blocks up."

"What if he gets out of the car and follows us?"  She would rather face the guy on the dimly lit sidewalk than in a pitch-black alley.

"Then you will kick his ass and save us."

She shot him a withering look, but he caught her hand and pulled her into the alley.  Patrick moved her in front of him as he looked back over his shoulder towards the road, but the driver, if he really had been stalking them, wasn't up for a chase on foot.  They made it out the other side and to Mandella's apartment building unscathed.

"Too bad he didn't pursue us," Patrick commented as he pulled the door open for her.  "There's nothing hotter than watching you take someone down."

"You forget.  I don't care what turns you on."

"Oh, I'm sorry.  I must be mixing you up with some other Kat that I just had sex with in the shower.  She looked just like you, only naked."

If there was anyone more infuriating on the planet, she pitied the people in their orbit.  Kat pulled the door next to her open, ignoring him standing there with the other door still open for her, and walked inside.

The party sucked, but a one-on-one interview with Gloria Allred would have sucked with the mood she was in.  If she was being fair, the music wasn't completely terrible and the general mood of the crowd made up for the lame costumes and beer stain she took to her shirt when a guy dressed as He-Man bumped into her on his way to make out with Skeletor.

Bianca was dressed up as the Little Mermaid in a long red wig and purple shell bikini that she felt positive their father did not know about.  He insisted on costume pictures every year, so she was pretty sure Party City took Bianca's money twice over this year, one Ariel and one nun costume to appease their dad.

"The three feet rule extends to this party," Kat told him when he attempted to join her at the punch bowl.  There were plastic spiders floating in it.  "If you hurry, you might still escape with nothing rearranged."

She became an urban legend at Padua after graduating.  New freshmen each year were introduced to the myth, the rumors, the alumni horror icon.  Mandella said she heard there were sophomores who wouldn't look in the mirrors at school in case Kat was looking back at them.  It was all very gratifying.

Patrick dropped his hand on the table to lean in close.  "I'm not afraid of you, you know?"  He hesitated as she shot him a glare and amended, half-joking, "I am generally, at most times, not afraid for my physical well-being around you."

Someone on Kat's other side said, "I can't say the same."

She looked over her shoulder, surprised to see Bobby Ridgeway scooping some spider punch into a plastic cup.  She hadn't seen him since he tried to grope her in the lunch line back in high school and had to have that testicle retrieval operation.  Even when he came back to school, he made himself so scarce around her as to become invisible.  He was dressed up as a football player.  She wondered if that was just so he would have an excuse to wear a cup.

Patrick grabbed her by the shoulders to swing her attention back his way and ushered her away from Bobby and his questionably healed balls.  He pulled her down a short hall with a long bathroom line and past a vampire, a clown, and a two-man zebra costume whose caboose was complaining about being doubled over so long.  They stopped beside a slumped over scarecrow against the wall that could have been an outfit stuffed with straw or an actual dude that got hammered and wasn't picky about where he bunkered down for the night.

Patrick crossed his arms and became firm.  "We can't fight all night.  You're flying out tomorrow.  You can't leave like that.  You can't."

Ah, if only they lived in a world where people could dictate the reactions of other people.  It would eliminate the need for apologies, self-reflection, and would make being a butthead so much easier.

"I'm not fighting," she replied matter-of-factly.  "You're ruining Christmas, and I'm responding."

"Could you 'respond' with less murder in your eyes?  I'm worried about what kind of weapons I'd find on you if I frisked you right now."

"If you try to frisk me right now, my bare hands will be more than enough."

Patrick threw his arms up.  There may as well have been a white flag clutched in one of his hands.  "What do I have to do?  Tell me.  I don't want to drop you off at the airport while we're _responding_."

That was easy.  "Come to New York like you said you would."

"I can't."

"Then I'll take a cab to the airport, and I'll see you next spring unless five months from now is too soon for you."  She pulled her arm away as he reached for her and walked back past the fighting zebra head and butt, reiterating, "Three feet!"

Kat danced with the Little Mermaid and Mandella and swore Patrick off with glares whenever he tried to approach until he gave up and found Scurvy in the crowd to share a beer with instead.

It wasn't that she didn't feel guilty about wasting what little time they had together on being angry, but it was the principle of it.  He couldn't just cancel and rearrange things without discussing it with her.  The statistical likelihood of long-distance relationships actually working out was low, and they couldn't beat the odds if they weren't both a hundred percent committed to The Plan.  The Plan kept them afloat when other couples would have sank.  Kat didn't fail at things that mattered to her.  It was important that Patrick not sabotage them with improvised alterations in the schedule they agreed to.

Still, she eventually escaped out to the balcony, lying with her knees up on the bench out there and didn't shove him away when he lifted her head onto his lap and sat down with her while Thriller blared inside.  She was afraid to peek back in and see if Cameron was attempting to lead a group into the dance.  Although, Bianca would kill him from the embarrassment, and that would have been worth seeing.  Scooting up a little to get comfortable, she leaned back against his chest and held the arm he wrapped around her.

"At least the Purple People Eater is over," she murmured and was happy to be somewhere with warm enough nights that she couldn't see her breath when she was outside that late.  New York was waiting to welcome her back with freezing arms.

"I think the DJ is bobbing for apples right now," Patrick said, sending tingles across her scalp as he ran long, annoyingly attractive fingers through her hair.  "Want me to hold his head down in the bowl?"

Making her struggle to hold back laughter was a strike against him.  When she was mad, it was his job not to make it hard to keep up.  Or so the fantasy went.  Mostly, no matter what, she wanted Patrick.

She attempted to sound stern, "You're breaking the three-feet-away rule."

He gave her a playful squeeze.  "That's sidewalk law."

She wanted him when they had every state piled up between them.  She wanted him when he called her in the middle of the night and made a point to let her know he wasn't even sorry about it even though all he had to say was that he'd just seen a man in a mullet on his way home from the night shift and wanted to know how sexy he'd be with a mullet of his own (answer: "Negative infinity.").  She wanted him when he first came into view at the airport for one of their visits and picked her up when she hugged him hello.  She wanted him when Mandella called to let her know she'd run into him at the store and when Bianca called to let her know Patrick had helped her when she'd gotten a flat tire.  She wanted him when she knew she could count on him, and she wanted him now even though doubt was waving its arms in the air and saying that maybe, just maybe, she couldn't.

Patrick could read her mind across five thousand miles.  The trick didn't lose its power in the same zip code.

He leaned down, pressing his chin to the top of her head and saying, "You know what you mean to me."  She started to sit up to pull away, but his arms tightened around her.  "Let me go to Australia for Christmas.  I'm not going to flip anything on you after this.  I promise you that."

She wanted to press him on it, to demand he just explain to her why he would change things without even discussing it with her first, ask him why he didn't understand why this was bothering her so much.  There was a lot she wanted to push and shove and demand.  However.

It was the music, the atmosphere, and those stupid fucking dimples that did her in.

Kat pushed his grip looser and sat up to pull herself over onto his lap.  He watched her carefully a moment before she gave him what he wanted: a pass.  Just this once.  Just because he earned her trust by now, and if he said this was something he had to do, then she believed that there was a good reason for it.  It was just one vacation after all, one holiday, one broken plan.  Sounded like a slippery slope, but she ignored that voice and listened to another.  The one that always wanted Patrick even when he drove her crazy.  Maybe especially then.

She kissed him.

Winning or making her point faded in importance out there by themselves with his arms around her the way she wished they could be when they talked on the phone from opposite ends of the country and filled each other in on their days.

_"Hey, girlie,"_ he'd say when she picked up some days.

_"Try not to be an idiot tomorrow,"_ she'd say before they both hung up for the night.

It was never enough, that was all.  So she let it go and kissed Patrick, relaxed against the warm press of his palm against her back as he tugged her closer, pretended it was okay even if it wasn't, because he was right.  They couldn't say goodbye while they were fighting.  Christmas wasn't worth years of their relationship.  Really, she was protecting her investment.

Patrick's mood was restored when she pulled back.  Long fingers combed through her hair, pushed loose strands back behind her ear.  He bumped her forehead gently with his own.  "I'll get us some drinks.  There seems to be two choices:  beer or the moonshine some geeks in there brewed that's probably arsenic."

The local ER would enjoy that influx later.

"Arsenic, up."

His eyes flashed with amusement, and he gave her a quick lift to get up.

She was settling back against the bench to wait when he paused at the balcony doors, nearly colliding with someone out of sight that was fixing to come through.

"I was looking for you."  It was Cameron.  "I saw Kat freezing you out earlier.  So I guess she didn't take you moving to Sydney well, huh?"

Her dad used to make her and Bianca watch crash test dummy videos before every driving lesson.  The brakes would screech, the car would wreck into solid concrete, and an airbag would blow up in some poor mannequin's face.   _Boom._  Just like that.  He was eating concrete through a shattered windshield.  That was what happened when you didn't put your seatbelt on before driving into a wall.  Or overhearing that your boyfriend was moving ten thousand miles away.  What was an extra seven thousand, right?

She stood up to confront him.  " _Moving_ to Sydney?"

Cameron looked between them, eyes widening at his mistake and opened his mouth to speak, but one glance from Kat was enough to send him nodding and hurrying away.

Patrick got the same look on his face that he got back at prom when Joey outed their arrangement and the lies came crumbling down on top of them, stricken and guilty—and worst of all, caught.

"Just for Christmas, huh?"

The song changed, and with it came a surge of bass and volume.  The people inside seemed pleased, but it just pissed Kat off more and gave her an instant headache.  She pushed past Patrick and marched through the throngs of laughing, dancing ghouls and princesses that didn't seem to realize that someone cut the brakes and threw her head through the glass.

A person passing out party favors at the door and encouraging vandalism of his roommate's car shoved silly string cans in their hands as they went by and teetered under the influence of the spiked spider punch.

Patrick was following her, but she ignored him until she made it out of the noisy apartment and past the people clogging up the hallways down to the street until she made it outside.  She stalked past a giggling group of Malibu Barbies and Ken dolls.

"Kat.  Kat!  Don't walk off.  Let me explain."

She spun around quickly, startling him into a clumsy stop to keep from running into her.  "I'm not walking off.  I'm going somewhere where I can hear you and where _you_ can hear _me_."

Because she didn't know what was going on, but if he thought he could pull the rug out from under her or their relationship or whatever he was trying to do and not get direct confrontation for it, he had another thing coming.  They weren't in high school anymore.  She wasn't going to give him the silent treatment and write him a poem.  She was going to live up to the Padua High urban legend.

A mix of surprise, relief and alarm came over him.

"Oh.  Good."  Instead of launching into an explanation, however, he shifted his weight and pointed his thumb back towards the apartment.  "Do you want to go back up and watch the costume contest first?  I think your sister might win—"

"Speak."

"Right.  Okay."  But before any explanation could have been offered, his gaze drifted over her shoulder and down the street.  "Is that...?"

"Patrick, I mean it.  Start making sounds that make words that create a reasonable explanation, or that guy chasing cars with a chainsaw up there is not going to be the scariest thing out here."

"No, Kat," he said seriously and took her arm, pulling her closer.  "It's that car."

"What car?"  She looked behind her, a half a block down.  Oh.  The one that was following them earlier.  "What do we do?"

He maneuvered her to his other side away from the street and led her forward.  "We'll go back to the apartment and wait for it to go."

"Okay."

It was a good, reasonable plan.  Except the car came to a stop a dozen feet back, and the driver's side door opened and shut behind someone getting out.  She risked a glance.  The hooded figure was cloaked all in black, face obscured by a plastic mask.

"Patrick."

"Yep."

Simultaneously, they uncapped the cans in their hands and dropped the lids as they walked.

"You grab him?" she suggested.

"You cap 'im," he answered.

They waited for the figure to get right up behind them before making their move.  Whirling around, they raised the cans and pressed the release on the nozzles, squirting huge, long neon colored squiggly lines of silly string right in his face.  He jerked backwards and stumbled, but Patrick moved quickly—cans clattering to the ground as they dropped them—and shoved his arms behind his back to lock him in place for her.  Kat gripped him by the shoulders and started to kick.

The assailant yelled, "My balls!"

She stopped with her knee a half-inch away from introducing his crotch to the force of a car crusher.  She and Patrick locked eyes over the guy's shoulder.

"Michael?" they asked together.

She pulled off his mask, and sure enough, a frightened Michael stared back at them.

She rolled her eyes, and Patrick let him go with an exasperated sigh.

"Why were you following us?" she demanded.  It would have been completely on him if they were forced to debilitate him over a prank or something.

He raised his hands, wide-eyed and not looking too confident that the danger had passed.  "I forgot the address to the party.  I thought I saw Cameron earlier, but it was some junior high punk, and let me tell you, he did not take kindly to being approached.  Sure, it was a laugh riot for him trying to wrap TP on me as I fled to my rental, but I wasn't going to make that mistake again until I was sure.  Is the assault over?  Can I start the lengthy process of slowing my heart down and away from cardiac arrest now?"

Her dad always told her in these situations to deny, deny, deny.  "I didn't assault you.  I was defending myself."

With fear and resignation shadowing his eyes, he said, "Kat, the day I take you on, please have my brain scanned.  Something up there is no longer working."

Patrick laughed and gave him a reassuring pat on the back, pointing up ahead.  "The party is that way."

"Thank you.  Have a pleasant evening.  I hope I don't run into either of you again for the rest of the night."  She wasn't sure, but she thought she heard him murmur, _or ever_.

"Happy Halloween," Patrick called after him.

Cowed, shoulders hunched and looking nervous, Michael left, waving over his shoulder but not looking back.

Alone again, the silence wasn't altogether comfortable, though it was much lighter than before.  There was an understanding.  When it mattered, they could count on each other.  Well, this, what he was doing?  It mattered.  Their eyes locked, and the gravity of her confused anger transformed into a need to understand.  Resigned, Patrick came over to her.

"My uncle's architectural firm?"

Not how she expected this to start.  "Yeah?"

"He's opening a new office next year.  In New York."  He looked back at her until the significance of that news dawned on her.  Kat's heart picked up speed.  It wasn't like driving into a wall, more like the videos with the safe dummies that wore a seatbelt before crashing.  They were startled, but everything was going to be okay.  "If I put in the work in Sydney, he's going to give me a position at the new office when it opens.  But I have to meet with him first, see what it's all about.  I didn't want to tell you in case it fell through.  We're already on a shit schedule.  I didn't want to get your hopes up until I knew it was a sure thing.  Then I was going to talk to you about it."

That was fair.  Except.  "You told Cameron."

He waved him off.  "Cameron heard me talking to my uncle.  Kat, I was going to tell you.  Of course, I was going to tell you.  I just wanted to know it was real first."

Something close to uncertainty shadowed his features as he watched her closely for a response.

Excitement began to come through in earnest.  It crawled forward slowly, disbelieving, and started to jolt her system as hard as that moonshine would have.

"You're moving to New York."

He shrugged, trying to manage her expectations, but she could tell that he thought it was going to pan out.  "I am _probably_ moving to New York."

"We have a plan now."  More importantly, a timeline.  The worst part about being in a long-distance relationship was how uncertain everything was.  They were making the best of a bad situation, but not having an end in sight was the hardest thing to deal with.

"We _probably_ have a plan now."

A grin whipped across her face.  Her heart felt a million times lighter seeing the light at the end of the ten thousand miles long tunnel.

A hesitant half-smile of his own got one of his annoyingly perfect dimples peeking back at her.  "Yeah?  You're happy?"

Her eyes closed momentarily as the last ounces of awfulness faded off, giving way to something much better: surprise, relief, the kind of joy that made her want to throttle him for not telling her sooner.

"I think we're done 'responding' now," she confirmed.

He laughed then, full and loud, and as much as she loved the sound of that laugh on the phone or over webcam, nothing compared to having him right there in front of her.  Where he would be every day next year, finally, if she had anything to do with it.  Which she would.  Now that she knew what needed to be done, it would get done.

He tapped her chin with a finger, and she looked up at him as he leaned in, voice dropping to a playful murmur as he drew nearer to say, "Hey there, girlie."

She frowned to fight off a smile.  It did him no good to think he was as charming as he thought he was.

"Don't be an idiot tomorrow," she warned, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him under the streetlights, like she would when he moved in with her the next year in a city that finally belonged to them both.


End file.
